Founder Clement C. P. Chang decided the theme of the convention, “Beyond Excellence: Reformulating Tamkang Educational Core Values,” from his reading of Excellence without a Soul, a new book by H. Lewis, Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. He emphasized the importance of self-evaluation and critique following the example by a historically first-class university.
The six reports in the convention were all organized by Founder Chang with ideas from six books newly published this year. He indicated that in addition to Professor Lewis’s reflection as the foundation of the convention for discussing the deep values of education, some hot topics in bio-technology, including the conflicts between religion and science and the social impacts of cloned sheep and human were discussed light of L. M. Silver’s Challenging Nature. The third and fourth books dealt with methodology and address the issues of management and business culture, while the last two concluded the convention with China’s and America’s influences on the global society. The six reports were presented by administrative heads after several months’ reading of the six books brought from America by Founder Chang.
According to Founder Chang, he goes to America for shopping every summer vacation, but he mainly shops at book stores, and always comes home with full freight of new knowledge. This is how the theme of meeting of teaching and administrative comes into being.
In her address at the opening ceremony, President Flora C. I. Chang responded to Founder Chang’s idea with the article “The Most Globalized University in the World” by Richard Levin, President of Yale University. She indicated that in response to the trend of globalization, many universities send students overseas and many researches are done across national boundaries. She alluded to “The Worldwide Ranking of Globalized Universities” by Newsweek in August to stress that openness, multiplicity and research results are criteria of ranking those globalized universities, in which the flow of students across nations becomes more and more active. (~ Han-yu Huang )
